Virgil+Jobe

In early April, 1969, 35-year-old Mrs. Catherine L. Barnard of Arvada, Colorado, died of a botched criminal abortion.

Dr. Virgil Roy Jobe, who was later also charged with performing an abortion on a 17-year-old Oklahoma girl, was convicted in Catherine's death. He was sentenced to five years in prison for the Oklahoma girl's abortion, as well as five years for Catherine's death, for which he remained out on bail pending appeal long enough for the then 70-year-old Jobe to face federal charges in 1972 for illegal distribution of amphetamines. Jobe was sentenced to three years prison and a $3,000 fine on those charges.

According to the teen's mother, the two went to Jobe's office two days before Catherine's death, 1969, but had to wait for the $100 abortion because other patients were waiting, some in the waiting room, one at the back door, and two in parked cars. Jobe, the mother said, took her daughter into an exam room to perform the abortion. When the girl screamed in pain, Jobe told the mother to "shut her up" to the others couldn't hear her.

Jobe was going to appeal his conviction by challenging the Constitutionality of the Oklahoma law, but, like many others, he was spared the trouble when //Roe v. Wade// achieved his goal for him. Clearly those who benefited first and most from //Roe// were the criminal abortionists who had killed and/or injured women prior to the ruling.

Jobe had been born May 18, 1902 in Lincoln, Arkansas, and died December 12, 1983 in Oklahoma City. He was the son of Louis Emmitt and Mary Elizabeth (Roy) Jobe. He was survived by three sons (Virgil Roy Jr., William L., and John R.) two daughters (Judith Jobe Doty and Sally Dowd), and sister Gladys Zimmerman.

He was a 1932 graduate of the University of Oklahoma Medical School.

I am trying to confirm that this is Jobe's high school yearbook photo from Central High School, Muskogee, OK, 1920: